


Song as Old as Rhyme

by Palizinha



Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:15:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28413006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Palizinha/pseuds/Palizinha
Summary: Keyblade apprentice Riku wanted the recognition he always felt he deserved, to live up to what he felt was his great destiny, and to find himself.Princess of Heart Kairi wanted freedom, to not have to rule over a castle she had been tortured on, and to understand herself.And then their lives clash.
Relationships: Kairi/Riku (Kingdom Hearts)
Kudos: 4





	1. Chapter 1

Riku liked to think of himself as the best.

Growing up, that had certainly been true.

He was a great fighter from the little he was allowed by his parents to fight, ran faster than any of the other kids, was the oldest of the gang, the smartest…

And more than that, he also had a great destiny.

Because you see, when he was five years old, he met a stranger, and the Destiny Islands didn’t have strangers. The man spoke of him one day getting away from his island and seeing other worlds, like that other guy in the Destiny Islands had.

Riku had been invested in doing just that for years - when he was the only one who could see the keyhole in the secret place most of all.

More than anything, Riku knew he was meant for greatness.

Which was why he wasn’t surprised, the day a pretty big bird had attacked Sora while they talked by the paopu fruit tree, that he was able to summon a key-shaped weapon.

The stranger had had one of those, after all. Said one day he would wield one like his.

Sora had been very surprised, but Riku made him promise not to tell anyone, because he knew that had to be a secret, considering the stranger had told him not to tell anyone either.

He had been fifteen years old then.

But wielding the Key didn’t give him the answers on how to leave the Destiny Islands like he had expected. It was cool, and he learned how to do it well pretty quickly, but that didn’t change anything.

But just a few days after he turned sixteen, he walked into the play island to get into the secret place and stare at the keyhole once again, hoping it would give him the answer he was looking for.

And just as he got up from his boat, he saw it. A bright light appeared, and left behind a girl.

Riku narrowed his eyes and summoned his weapon, trying to figure out who the girl was and if she was a danger to the Islands. She didn’t seem much older than him, and didn’t look out of place on the island either.

“You’re a wielder?” Was the first thing she said, and Riku stared at her in confusion. “Do you not know? That’s a Keyblade.”

“How do you know about it?” Riku asked.

“I’m a Keyblade wielder, too,” the girl said, before shaking her head and smiling at him. “I’m Lilo, Master Aqua’s apprentice.”

After she finished speaking, she summoned her own Keyblade (as it was apparently called). It also seemed like something out of the Islands, though he was sure he had never seen her before. Full of color.

His was much simpler by comparison - silver with a golden hilt. It had always felt very true to who he was, however, so he figured the same was true to hers.

“I’m Riku,” Riku said. “I was told by a man I met as a child that I’d be able to wield one of these one day. But I never found a way to leave this place and find him again.”

“If he’s a Keyblade wielder, Master Aqua probably knows him. Master Terra, Master Ventus and Master Ventus’ friends are the only ones around the Land of Departure, but there could be others,” Lilo took out a small green ball and put it in the water, after which a strange creature showed up. “This is Experiment 203, Snipe. He can teleport between worlds, and is my very unusual method of teleportation. I can take you with me.”

Riku just stared at her. Yes, meeting the stranger meant he knew other worlds likely existed, but she was the first proof that that was true he had since that day. He knew it had happened, his Keyblade existed after all, but it still felt weird.

“So, do you want to come?” Lilo asked.

Riku nodded after a moment, “Yeah, sure. But I need to say goodbye to my best friend first.”

Lilo nodded. “I came here to check this world’s Keyhole because strange things have been happening around the worlds recently. Go talk to your friend and we’ll meet here afterwards. Do you know where the Keyhole in this world is?”

Riku explained where the Keyhole was and left to talk to Sora. It wasn’t a goodbye, more like a ‘see you later’. He’d probably learn how to get back here after he started training, and then he could come to visit his family, Sora, and the others whenever he wanted.

Sora took it well, considering. They had been together their entire lives, and Riku would miss him, but Sora had always known Riku wanted out, to explore the great wide somewhere. They used to talk about leaving, just the two of them, in the past, but Sora had never truly believed that there were other worlds out there, not without Riku telling him about the stranger, and that had been a secret he kept all along.

“Ready to go?” Lilo asked, afterwards.

“Let’s do it,” Riku nodded.

He had always wanted to explore other worlds and see the stranger again, and now those things were going to happen.

Of course, Riku had no way of knowing just what he was getting himself into, having never left his world before, and knowing very little of the outside world. He just hoped he wouldn’t regret it.

* * *

Kairi heavily disliked being a Princess.

Or maybe that wasn’t the right title to go with. She wasn’t an actual Princess, because Radiant Garden wasn’t a kingdom or anything.

But it did have a ruler, Ansem the Wise.

Under normal circumstances, the ruler of Radiant Garden after Ansem the Wise would have been his adopted son, Ienzo.

But when Kairi was five years old, there had been a huge controversy where Ansem the Wise and his apprentices, one of which was the then 11 years old Ienzo, had been found out to have conducted experiments in Radiant Garden residents.

As it were, Kairi was one of them.

To this day she had no idea what had happened there, as she had been the only child taken before Ansem the Wise had finally listened to his conscience and came clean to the population about what had happened.

Were Radiant Garden a normal place, Ansem the Wise would have been deposed from his place as ruler, but that hadn’t happened. Instead, most of the people who lived there had somehow decided what he did was forgiven because he at least had been truthful about it and regretted doing it.

They gave him another chance.

Never mind that Kairi’s grandmother had been worried sick about her the whole time, and quite a few of the people he experimented on had been too far gone. The one teenager had disappeared, Kairi knew. Though that had been the reason Ansem the Wish had shut down the operation.

There had been some outcry, to be fair, and so Kairi had been Ansem the Wise’s way of making up for his mistakes, for his research. As well as, of course, regaining everyone’s trust.

He publicly announced he would train her to take over his place as the ruler, and so he had done.

No one had asked Kairi what she actually wanted, not even her own grandmother, who had been so proud to be related to the rightful future ruler of Radiant Garden.

What did Kairi want? To not have to see the men who had experimented on her every day for the rest of her life.

Ienzo wasn’t that bad. He had been very young at the time, a genius or not, and he was mostly fine. Everyone else… was different. Braig always looked like he knew more than he was saying, and Kairi had a really bad feeling around him, like he wasn’t trustworthy. Even was just creepy. Aeleus and Dilan barely spoke.

But out of all of them, Ansem the Wise was the one she liked the least.

Kairi wasn’t sure whether he actually regretted what he had done, because he hadn’t actually stopped his research into other people’s hearts. Sure, he (as far as she knew) didn’t experiment on people anymore, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t still playing around with tech in a really dangerous way.

Kairi wanted out, but she knew it wasn’t that simple.

Everyone was counting on her. From the few friends she still had that weren’t put off by the ‘future ruler’ thing, to even Ansem the Wise, who she didn’t exactly like, but was also afraid of disappointing. One of the last things her Grandmother had told her before she died was to make her proud as the ruler. Kairi knew she had to put everyone else over herself.

And so, for ten years, Kairi had gone along with everything.

She became the perfect Princess (or whatever).

Kept up with her studies, both the normal ones and the ones she had with Ansem the Wise on how to be a good ruler (lesson number one: don’t go around kidnapping people to use in experiments, unless you really apologize afterwards).

All in all, she was perfect.

Or, well, really good at pretending that she was perfect.

But Kairi… Kairi wanted more. Having lessons with Ansem the Wise, who was friends with King Mickey, a king of another world, meant Kairi knew there were other worlds out there. A great wide somewhere.

And she would never get to visit any of them, not if she wanted to live up to everyone’s expectations of her.

Kairi knew that the life she had now was the one she would always have, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have hopes.

Hopes were just that, though. Hopes.

And she knew her duty came first.


	2. Chapter 2

When Riku first arrived at the Land of Departure, he was blown away.

It looked so different from the Destiny Islands, and for all that he had spent his whole life dreaming about leaving his world, it had never occurred him to wonder what other worlds would actually be like.

“Lilo, did you defy the world order again?” A blue-haired woman said as she approached them.

“I technically didn’t do it last time,” Lilo pointed out, and Riku wondered what was the story there. “Master Aqua, I found a Keyblade wielder in the Destiny Islands, his name is Riku.”

Riku looked at Master Aqua, and realized he had met her before. She looked different, but that was to be expected eleven years later. He noticed she recognized him too.

“You are probably too young to remember…” Master Aqua began saying.

“You asked Sora to look after me,” Riku said. “I remember. But you didn’t have to worry, I don’t need to be saved, least of all by Sora.”

Master Aqua raised an eyebrow, like he had said something wrong. A notion Riku didn’t agree with, because, yes, maybe he was a bit cocky, but it was with reason.

“I wondered when we would be seeing you,” Master Aqua said. “Terra considered going after you the moment the danger with Xehanort was over, but we both decided you were too young.”

“I’d have preferred if he had gone after me,” Riku said. “I didn’t need to spend so long in a nowhere island when I could be a hero instead.”

“Being a Keyblade wielder is about more than heroics, Riku,” Master Aqua said. “I suppose being trained by Terra will shape you up. He was much like you, back then.”

The way Master Aqua said it… Riku decided he didn’t quite like her.

“Is Terra here?” Riku asked. Terra was the one who mattered, the one who had seen he was special. What Master Aqua thought of him was inconsequential.

Master Aqua sighed. “Go ahead there, you’ll find him and Ven. Lilo, I’d like to have a report of your first official mission.”

Lilo started talking of the worlds she visited and Riku looked at her for a second before going after Terra. He’d be going on his own missions soon enough, and he couldn’t wait. No more pretend fighting with Sora with wooden swords, he had an actual weapon now, and he’d learn all the ways that it could be used, as he surely hadn’t learned all of them on his own without anyone to train with.

When he walked inside, he found a blond man laughing with someone he recognized. Terra.

The blond man stopped talking when he noticed him. “New kid?”

“I’m not a kid,” Riku said automatically.

“You finally found your way here,” Terra said, smiling warmly at him.

“You chose me, so you must have known I would,” Riku said.

“Oh, is that the kid you bequeathed, Terra? I’m Ventus, call me Ven,” Ventus said, and Riku looked at him. He was older than Riku by quite a few years, but he had an innocent grin that reminded Riku of Sora.

“Riku.”

“I assume you came here to train,” Terra said. “Do you already have your Keyblade?”

Riku summoned it instantly, and Terra and Ven both seemed a bit surprised by that. It made Riku smirk.

“I want to be trained, Master Terra,” Riku said. “I’ve waited a long time. I always knew the time would come where I’d find you.”

Master Terra walked closer to him and put a hand on his shoulder. “Being a Keyblade wielder is a tough job. It requires putting the fate of the world over your needs, even when you don’t want to. I wanted to wait until you were old enough, but I should have known it would only make you seek me out by yourself.”

Riku wasn’t too young, and he hadn’t been too young in a very long time. He didn’t understand why Terra would be hesitant when he had been the one to give him a Keyblade in the first place.

“Give the new guy a break, Terra,” Ven said with an amused smile. “I became a Keyblade wielder very young and I turned out fine!”

“You almost died. More than once,” Terra said.

“Yeah, but I didn’t. You don’t need to project your emotions over what happened to me on Riku, you’ll be a good Master to him. The way Xehanort wasn’t for either of us.”

Terra shook his head, like they had had this argument many times.

Riku wondered many things after hearing the conversation, but decided it was best to just learn the full story with time.

“Your training begins tomorrow,” Terra said. “But we might have to send you on missions earlier than we should, because there aren’t that many of us and things have been… complicated. Maleficent has always meant trouble, but she seems more trouble than usual this time.”

“Maleficent?” Riku asked.

“Evil sorceress,” Ven explained. “We’ve stopped her schemes in the past, like when she kidnapped a couple Princesses of Heart a few years back. She isn’t that strong by herself, but she has control over Heartless, and a group of strong allies from various worlds.”

“I’ll stop her, then,” Riku said, gripping the Keyblade still in his hand harder.

“You won’t be alone, Riku,” Terra said.

Riku smiled at him. Yeah, he was surrounded by others who could understand him now.

That was different.

* * *

“I would like to propose a review of the Replica Program,” Even said, like he did in every other meeting from the many Kairi had sat on for the past two years.

“We’ve talked about this, Even,” Ansem the Wise said, like a long-suffering father. “I see the point of creating synthetic beings, but the population took such a long time to completely forgive us over the human experimentation, doing something like this now would be a mistake.”

“I do agree that having powerful beings to protect us would be a better protection system to this world than most other alternatives,” Ienzo spoke. “I am just not quite sure we could do something like that and keep control of these beings. Hearts are unpredictable.”

“I understand that that’s a concern, but we could work out something,” Even said. “If you’d give me the go-ahead, we could work on this for as long as needed. They don’t need to be under our complete control, just have to be aware that their purpose is to protect the town. They could become actual citizens.”

“Even, giving people superpowers and then telling them to protect us doesn’t actually guarantee they’ll protect us. They could just as easily defect and try to kill people instead,” Kairi pointed out.

Every time the subject came up, the same arguments were given by both sides, and Even would then back down. Only to bring it up again at the next possible opportunity.

Kairi had been tired of it by the third time it happened.

“Any other matters to discuss?” Ansem the Wise asked, looking around the table.

These meetings were held monthly, and generally went over the same topics, because nothing really happened in Radiant Garden these days. Outside of Kairi, the people who usually sat at those meetings were Ansem the Wise himself, Even, Ienzo, Braig and Isa. Isa was technically not one of Ansem the Wise’s apprentices, but he and his husband Lea had been involved in the ruling of Radiant Garden since they were teenagers.

Mostly because they were friends with the kidnapped teenager who disappeared, and Kairi guessed Ansem the Wise felt guilty and wanted to include them on something while giving platitudes on how they would find her one day.

The meetings were something Kairi was quite used to, what she wasn’t used to was Even following her outside after it was over.

“Kairi, can I talk to you?” Even asked.

Kairi had a strong feeling she was going to regret having the conversation. “What can I do for you, Even?”

Even smiled that sinister smile of his and asked Kairi to follow him somewhere, and while Kairi was quite sure that wasn’t a good idea, she went anyway.

They went down the stairs Kairi knew led to the place where she and many others were held, all those years back.

“I suppose you wonder why we chose you.”

“You needed a child and I was the first you could find?” Kairi guessed. She had in fact wondered that many times, and as there was nothing special about her, that seemed the most likely explanation.

“Oh, no, we wanted you,” Even grinned. “I suppose Ansem the Wise never told you, but you are a Princess of Heart.”

“A what?” Kairi asked, because… there wasn’t anything special about her.

“A group of seven people scattered around the many worlds, who do not have darkness on their heart,” Even explained, though Kairi knew that information. “And to have one so close to home when we were trying to understand darkness and hearts! It was very lucky.”

“For you, maybe,” Kairi said.

Being around Ansem the Wise for as many years of her life as she had, Kairi knew that Princesses of Heart existed, but to be one of them? That had never crossed her mind.

“We didn’t get to explore your heart much,” Even said. “And that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

Even walked over to a wall, and put a key on a hidden keyhole Kairi hadn’t noticed.

Kairi followed Even inside, and saw containers with vaguely human-shaped blobs on them.

“You are doing it. The Replica Program,” Kairi realized.

“Of course I am,” Even said. “I’m a scientist. We don’t stop because someone with power says no. And as this is technically not human experimentation, it doesn’t go against what Ansem the Wise promised we wouldn’t do again.”

“But you want my help,” Kairi said. “With what?”

“I’ve tried to replicate others in the past,” Even said. “Naturally without their knowledge. But it is a concern that, if given free will, the Replicas could turn against us. A Replica made from a person with a pure heart? That negates the concern.”

“Wait, so you’re saying that because I have a pure heart, I can’t turn evil?”

“I suppose you could,” Even acknowledged. “But you couldn’t use darkness, and without darkness… well, beings of pure light aren’t known for their strength.”

Kairi was pretty sure that was an insult.

“So you want to use my data on a Replica?” Kairi asked.

“Your data is the perfect option,” Even said.

“What do I gain out of this?” Kairi asked. “As helpful as a better security system for Radiant Garden would be, I’d be going against Ansem’s orders.”

“Well, I’m sure you’re able to figure something out,” Even said, before smirking at her. “After all, we did make experiments on you. Someone with your heart, and you could learn why.”

“So I help you, and in return I get to make some experiments myself on the Replica after we’re done so I’ll know why my heart was interesting enough for you people to kidnap a child?” Kairi asked, interested in the matter.

She had wondered most of her life what was it about her that made it so she had been the only child experimented on. If it wasn’t just bad luck, if there was more than that… she needed to know.

“Of course, I would also appreciate you being on my side in the Replica Program argument on the monthly meetings. It is rather tiring to hear the same back and forth every time without someone to support me,” Even said.

“Maybe if you weren’t the perfect stereotypical mad scientist, people would listen to your ideas,” Kairi said with a smirk.

“Mad scientist or not, I’m right. Considering you accepted my offer to talk, you know it too,” and how Kairi hated to know it was true.

She had a very bad feeling about this.


End file.
